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A question I received: How can another person’s desire become my own vital need?

My Answer: This can only happen if you really see that this is so. You shouldn’t force yourself to give out candy and flowers to people, or to smile at them all day long. And you shouldn’t hypocritically try to be a “nice person.” Rather, Kabbalah is talking about an inner correction that takes place consciously, as a result of you seeing the goal; you see how reality is arranged and you see yourself in comparison to it.

You then begin to move away from evaluating things by your sensations of good or bad, since they revoke your freedom of will and turn you into a helpless animal. Instead you begin to realize the greatness of the goal; it becomes the highest thing to you. However, you don’t value it out of the egoistic benefit it promises, but based on a completely different principle.

But how is this possible, if our whole life revolves around sensations of good and bad, fulfillment and emptiness? It’s because you actually acquire a new criterion of true and false which is not based on self-satisfaction, but on spiritual importance. It is brought to you by the Light, although you do not even realize this.

That is how the force of bestowal comes to you. It is something you have never felt before, and little by little, it begins to influence you, giving you the quality of Bina which is above all your current calculations. You acquire a different nature, one with which you are currently unfamiliar, and it becomes your yardstick for measuring all the actions and changes taking place.

However, in the meantime, everything you do is necessary only in order to awaken the influence of this force. The entire method of Kabbalah lies in learning how to attract the Light that will cause a change in you. Without its help, you will never change on your own. You will remain forever trapped in the labyrinth of philosophical intricacies. On the other hand, if the Light influences you, you will begin to see and will learn everything.

This is why we have begun studying The Book of Zohar: in order to give every person (even total beginners) an opportunity to be in contact with the Light, on which we depend completely.

One Comment

Guillermo ~ Feb 1, 2010 at 11:40 pm

Rav Laitman: who was really Jesus and what was his relationship to Kabbalah?
If you read the Christian Gospels and particularly some of the ones which did not make the “cut” to e included in the Bible (New Testament), Jesus’ message bears a lot of resemblance to Kabbalah.

Is it possible that he was a Kabbalist and his message was not well understood or hidden?